Product Description

The uniquely packaged Hot Buttons Series is an accessible, quick-reference resource that parents can use to equip their children to make the right decisions, even in the face of peer pressure and outside influences. More than just another how-to manual, Hot Button Dating edition offers practical real-life situations that parents can read and discuss with their preteens. Topics include: physical activity, missionary dating, and violence/abuse in dating relationships.

Product Information

Publisher's Description

The uniquely packaged Hot Buttons Series is an accessible, quick-reference resource that parents can use to equip their children to make the right decisions, even in the face of peer pressure and outside influences. More than just another how-to manual, Hot Button Dating edition offers practical real-life situations that parents can read and discuss with their preteens. Author, mom, and broadcaster, Nicole O'Dell provides short scenarios followed by three or four responses that a teen might choose in that particular situation. Parents are then encouraged to help their children explore the issue, ask questions, and discuss the options, so when a similar situation comes up in real life, the teens are already prepared to respond.

About the Series

The Hot Buttons Series continues to be a quick-reference resource that parents can use to safeguard their children from today's negative influences.

From substance abuse to temptation, relationships to breakups, peer pressure to popularity, teens face all sorts of tough issues. How teens respond to these challenges will influence their future, possibly define their future, maybe even determine whether they have a future or not. What if parents could help their teens prepare for these hot buttons - before the issues arise? Now they can, and in a way that's serious but fun, direct but nonconfrontational, and abundantly beneficial to the parent-teen relationship.

I cannot recommend this series of books highly enough. My daughter is not quite a teen, but I read the entire series. This one deals with dating, and I love the fact that there are scenarios, up-to-date information, and a parent-teen study guide. There is practical information for every parent, and the author is not afraid to share her mistakes with her readers. I have read many books about some of the issues covered in these books, but I have not found one that made so much sense and was so Biblically based. I am setting these aside, and I am sure within the next year or two, these books will come in handy since my daughter is almost a pre-teen.

I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I was not financially compensated, and all opinions are 100 percent mine.

Nicole O'Dell's Hot Button Editions can help parents, even timid parents, to become prepared, watchful and proactive with their tweens and teens in the four following areas:

Internet use

Drug abuse

Dating guidelines

Sexuality and purity

(Bullying and Image Editions will release in 2013)

Nicole exudes confidence in her books to parents in helping them learn how to initiate conversations with their young people for their own personal safety, their ability to stand strong against peer pressure, and live a Godly life. Scripture is generously used to combat the lies Satan puts in our children's minds and to help parents teach and demonstrate Godly lifestyles.

Nicole answers the Why, When and How in each book as they speaks directly to the issues at hand, which are the prepared, watchful, and proactive stances listed above. I found this information vital for parents to know, as well as to process with their tween/teen.

The section under identifying the issue goes into greater detail, giving parents a great resource tool to open discussions with their children and to counsel them in the ways of God. And we all know as parents how hard it can be to open up discussions on these difficult issues at times with our teens.

The third section includes protective procedures, the armor of God and strategic scenarios to work through with their young people, helping them to prepare beforehand to stand up to peer pressure, drug pushers, dating pressures, and learning how they can control their own sexuality. I particularly think the strategic scenarios are a great tool to help their son/daughter to think through scenarios before they are enticed. Using the armor of God as parents and individually by the son/daughter will help them stand stronger.

Nicole O'Dell gives us a lot of great advice and information. If you have young people at home, start early to teach them Godly truths for these issues. Don't leave it to the schools or church to do your parental duty. After all, God gave them to you to raise and teach them to walk in His ways. You CAN do it!

I believe every parent needs to get these Hot Button books. Remember, they are teaching sex education as early as kindergarten. Be proactive and reach your children for the Lord and His Godly ways before society and the media lead them down wrong and painful paths. These issues are close to my heart, and I thank Nicole for writing these practical, wise books for parents.

Praying for your children is parenting at its best! (Carrie, BSF leader)

These four books were provided free by Amy Lathrop of Litfuse Publicity Group in exchange for my honest opinion. No monetary compensation was received.

Nicole O'Dell in her new book "Hot Buttons" Four Books in her Teen Issues Series published by Kregel Publications looks at Drugs, Sexuality, Internet and Dating.

Nicole O'Dell helps address the Hot Buttons in teens' lives before the issues become problems

From dating to drugs, modesty to purity, morals to popularity, teens face all sorts of tough issues. How teens respond to these hot-button issues can have lasting effects on who they want to be and who they actually become. What if parents can help their teens prepare for these hot buttons-before the issues become a problem?

The uniquely packaged Hot Buttons Series is an accessible, quick-reference resource that parents can use to equip their children to make the right decisions, even in the face of peer pressure and outside influences. More than just another how-to manual, Hot Button Dating Edition offers practical real-life situations that parents can read and discuss with their preteens. Topics include: physical activity, missionary dating, and violence/abuse in dating relationships.

Author, mom, and broadcaster, Nicole O'Dell provides short scenarios followed by three or four responses that a teen might choose in that particular situation. Parents are then encouraged to help their children explore the issue, ask questions, and discuss the options, so when a similar situation comes up in real life, the teens are already prepared to respond.Hot Buttons Dating Edition offers practical real-life situations that parents can read and discuss with their preteens. Topics include: physical activity, missionary dating, and violence/abuse in dating relationships.

Hot Buttons Sexuality Edition offers the facts about teen sexuality, backed by statistics; specifics for how to talk frankly about sex with your kids, discussion about the growth of homosexuality and bisexuality among teens; and compassionate advice for guiding your teen to reclaim purity.

Want a safe, easy way to have a conversation with your teens that includes information, facts, statistics at your fingertips? Then the Hot Buttons series from Nicole O'Dell were written just for you. Ms. O'Dell discusses the Internet: social media, predators, pornography and others, Sexuality: purity, birth control, homosexuality and others, Drug: alcohol, inhalants, prescription drugs and others, Dating: who, when, where, how. Parents need to take control of the issues and not leave it in the hands of the children but are not always comfortable with the how to do that. Ms. O'Dell's books are just the what the doctor ordered. h The children need the parents ofr guidance in these crucial areas, these books are just the tools the parents have been waiting for. Ms. O'Dell's books will equip you with the scriptural wisdom that is needed to touch on the big issues in a comfortable way.

Meet Nicole:Youth-culture expert, Nicole O'Dell is the host of Choose NOW Radio: Parent Talk and Teen Talk and the founder of Choose NOW Ministries, dedicated to guiding teens through tough issues and helping parents encourage good decisions.

On air, O'Dell covers peer pressure, dating, purity, drugs, alcohol, modesty, popularity, and anything else that comes up along the way. Nicole writes and speaks to preteens, teenagers, and parents about how to prepare for life's tough choices.

As an author, O'Dell writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her popular YA fiction includes the Diamond Estate Series and the Scenarios for Girls interactive books that feature alternate endings, allowing young girls to decide the outcome for the main character. Her nonfiction for teens includes Girl Talk, which she wrote with her two daughters based on their popular advice column.

While her YA resources encourage and equip teens, Nicole also works to bridge the communication gap between teens and their parents. The Hot Buttons series helps parents discuss tough issues with their tweens and teens before the issues pop up in real life. Watch for future Hot Buttons books on subjects like bullying, image, prejudice, friendships, politics, and more.

O'Dell, resides in Paxton, IL, with her husband and six children-the youngest of whom are toddler triplets.

Win a $100 Visa Cash Card at the Hot Buttons Live Video Chat with Nicole O'Dell!

Kregel Live Webcast event

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Litfuse Publicity Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

These books would be good tool for not just parents, but anyone working with adolescents and teens. O'Dell's books will equip you with the scriptural wisdom that is needed to touch on the big issues in a comfortable way.

Within one month of receiving Hot Buttons: Dating Edition, and Hot Buttons: Internet Edition, my family recognized the need for the information each book --by author Nicole O'Dell-- provided. Our youngest daughter got her first call from a young man, and later also requested a Facebook page of her own. As she enters middle school the only girl with two older brothers in high school and college respectively, the "book" on child rearing is no longer the same. So, O'Dell's books are timely to say the least.

What I did not realize before reading "Dating Edition" was how much my daughter's young suitor would cause me to change my thinking, my habits and my relationship with her and her mother. For instance, one of O'Dell's challenges to parents is to "evaluate your lifestyle. Do your kids look at you as someone they wish to emulate one day?" Honestly, no. But it is still vitally important that I live the life that I preach about and that I preach about it less than I live it, according to O'Dell.

What gives this lady the right to tell me how to raise my daughter after two fairly successful -but still unfinished -passes at raising sons? For starters, she is the mother of six of her own children and she is considered a "youth culture expert" who is "dedicated to battling peer pressure and guiding teens through tough issues while helping parents encourage good decisions."

Good decisions are even more important in the wilderness that is the internet. Child predators, financial schemers and pranksters abound in a "worldly" wide web that is available to anyone with a wi-fi enabled laptop. Not only must "Big Brother" be watching teens and pre-teens, but mother and father should as well, according to O'Dell in Internet Edition.

In both books, which were provided free in exchange for an honest review, O'Dell's agenda, for lack of a better term, is that parents partner with their children in not only making good decisions, but in framing those decisions in a godly way and exercising ownership in those decisions as well as their consequences.

My family and fellow youth ministers await with bated breath the next two books in the Hot Buttons series: Drug Edition and Sexuality Edition.

What O'Dell does that is fresh and new is she creates all-tooâ€”realistic scenarios and encourages parents to give children who are mature enough several optionsâ€”some of which are downright badâ€”and allow them to make "an honest decision." She also offers discussion points and even prayers for parents who are struggling with the treacherous world of teens and pre-teens as much (if not more) than their children are. This book must be on the shelf of every youth minister, in the purse of every mother of a young person and in the hands of every sweaty palmed parent (with paper towels because it is paperback) and in the minds of every youth and young adult who has considered Christ. These are hot buttons that must be kept close at all times.